Book titles published in Africa held by North American university research libraries and review sources for African-published books

Abstract

This article examines the extent to which titles published by sub-Saharan African (SSA) publishers are represented in the collections of North American libraries, especially institutions participating in the Association of Research Libraries (ARL). The article also gauges the percentage of African-published nonfiction titles that are reviewed by scholarly journals and library reviewing tools to ascertain whether the presence of such reviews is related to the number of African-published nonfiction titles owned by North American libraries. Although ARL university libraries at institutions with well-established African studies programs housed in stand-alone academic units typically have strong collections of SSA-published titles, ARL university libraries at institutions not meeting such criteria have relatively weak collections of SSA-published titles. In addition, despite the general high quality of African-published titles, reviewing tools, such as Choice, do not review them frequently.